Malware in Mobile Devices

Malware means software designed to function in ways that
mistreat or harm the user. (This does not include accidental errors.)

Malware and nonfree software are two different issues. The difference
between free software and
nonfree software is in
whether the users have control of the program or vice versa. It's
not directly a question of what the program does when it
runs. However, in practice nonfree software is often malware, because
the developer's awareness that the users would be powerless to fix any
malicious functionalities tempts the developer to impose some.

Here are examples of malware in mobile devices. See also
the the Apple malware
page for malicious functionalities specific to the Apple iThings.

Google can also forcibly and remotely
install apps through GTalkService (which seems, since that article, to have
been merged into Google Play). This adds up to a universal back door.

Although Google's exercise of this power has not been
malicious so far, the point is that nobody should have such power,
which could also be used maliciously. You might well decide to let a
security service remotely deactivate programs that it
considers malicious. But there is no excuse for allowing it
to delete the programs, and you should have the right to
decide who (if anyone) to trust in this way.

The article should not have described these apps as
“free”—they are not free software. The clear way to say
“zero price” is “gratis.”

The article takes for granted that the usual analytics tools are
legitimate, but is that valid? Software developers have no right to
analyze what users are doing or how. “Analytics” tools that snoop are
just as wrong as any other snooping.